A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and
the Making of the United States.

Article Type:

Book review

Subject:

Books
(Book reviews)

Author:

Gilfoyle, Timothy J.

Pub Date:

09/22/2009

Publication:

Name: Journal of Social History Publisher: Journal of Social History Audience: Academic Format: Magazine/Journal Subject: History; Sociology and social work Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 Journal of Social
History ISSN:0022-4529

Issue:

Date: Fall, 2009 Source Volume: 43 Source Issue: 1

Topic:

NamedWork: A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the
Making of the United States (Nonfiction work)

Persons:

Reviewee: Mihm, Stephen

Accession Number:

209577957

Full Text:

A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of
the United States. By Stephen Mihm (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2007. 457 pp. $29.95).

The United States was the verge of becoming "a nation of
counterfeiters!" rued the editor and publisher Hezekiah Niles in
1818. Niles decried the ubiquity of counterfeiting and fraudulent paper
in the early republic; forgery, he lamented, "seems to have lost
its criminality in the minds of many" (6).

Stephen Mihm's original, colorful and inventive study uncovers
a hidden and forgotten chapter of American history: how the early
American economy functioned with a weak--sometimes non-existent--central
government and no national currency. Antistatist sympathies of early
Americans discouraged the creation of a national currency or central
bank. Those responsibilities were effectively privatized, and
state-chartered banks and corporations enjoyed the right to print money.

Bank notes were the "markers of the market revolution; they
were capitalism incarnate" (15). In a society suffering from lack
of specie or hard money, paper currency was popular, if not an outright
necessity. Mihm points out that colonial North America was the
world's most tolerant society regarding paper money. Some even
considered counterfeiting to have beneficial effects, a view which
persisted well into the nineteenth century.

The popularity of paper currency, the lack of hard specie, and a
weak national state resulted in private banks enjoying unusual power. By
1840, at least 711 banks issuing their own paper bills. Even when banks
published "counterfeit detectors" to help law-abiding
citizens, criminals took the guides and printed better phoney notes.

A privatized paper currency placed a great emphasis on trust and
confidence. This worked with local, face-to-face economic transactions.
But in an increasingly anonymous and geographically-dispersed economy,
fraud and forgery grew rampant. Mihm argues that only a thin blue line
separated real from counterfeit money. Sometimes such boundaries simply
vanished. Banks that issued notes without the requisite financial
reserves or assets were little different from counterfeiters, at least
to many contemporaries. Bank and counterfeit notes alike required users
to deem something valuable that had little intrinsic worth. Bankers and
confidence men not only thrived in this system; they shared the same
values.

Mihm presents a social history of the United States in which the
netherworld intersects with public life in the early republic.
Counterfeiters like Stephen Burroughs, Seneca Page and others worked out
of Cogniac Street in Durham, Quebec for several decades. After 18.30,
New York and Philadelphia became counterfeit centers as corrupt printers
and engravers were attracted to the lucrative business. By then, a
national network of counterfeit crime had emerged, exemplified by family
entrepreneurs like Daniel Brown and William Taylor whose influence
extended to the Midwest and South. Some intermarried; others like James
Brown were elected justice of the peace in their communities (Boston,
Ohio).

Counterfeiting persisted for multiple reasons: weak punishments and
frequent pardons of perpetrators; little cooperation among local, state
and federal agencies; the absence of effective local police forces; the
ability of counterfeiters to work out of Canada; the growing anonymity
of cities and marketplace encounters; the need for and popularity of
paper money in the west; the surreptitious use of discarded printing
plates of bankrupt banks; and the simple willingness of ordinary
citizens to pass counterfeit notes to others rather than turning them
in.

This changed only with the Civil War. A reinvigorated federal
government banned state-chartered bank notes and replaced them with a
national currency. Mihm argues that this involved more than money. A
true national currency demanded faith in a new concept: the nation.
National loyalty now transcended faith in the market, private banks and
individual citizens. Counterfeiting thus became a threat to nationhood
and national security, not simply a nuisance.

Some fault Mihm for overstating the importance of currency to
nationhood. (1) Others claim he conflates counterfeiters and paper money
proponents, thereby adopting the antebellum criticisms of hard money
advocates. (2) Personally, I wish Mihm pursued his argument that
counterfeiters like Stephen Burroughs were the earliest American
outlaws. At one point, he argues that such men "performed a public
service" (200). Were Burroughs and his compatriots similar to the
bandits described by Eric Hobsbawm? Mihm's counterfeiters appear to
be a special breed of lawbreakers. They were not considered simple
criminals by contemporaries. Some officials regarded them as outlaws,
yet they remained within the "moral order" of their rural and
village communities; as noted, some were elected to public office.
Counterfeiters assumed an ambiguous status, a crucial characteristic in
Hobsbawm's analysis of banditry. The open hatred of banks by
antebellum Americans starving for credit and capital coincides with
Hobsbawm's thesis that banditry flourishes when the law is
perceived as corrupt (i.e. bankers), thereby separating
"justice" and "law." (3)

This unanswered question, however, originates from the provocative
and creative arguments found throughout A Nation of Counterfeiters, not
from any oversight by Mihm. The author has mined a surfeit of sources:
criminal indictments from the New York City Municipal Archives, Library
of Congress manuscripts, national archival collections in Canada and the
United States, early Secret Service records, unexamined memoirs,
numerous business newspapers and economic journals, and economic
histories little read by a generation of social historians. In ways to
which most historians only aspire, Mihm compels economists and social
scientists to appraise the cultural impact of paper money, while social
and cultural historians are forced to assess the political economy of
currency. In the twenty-first century, paper currency has become almost
invisible. Mihm more than makes money visible. Like his prose, the
subject comes alive.

Timothy J. Gilfoyle

Loyola University Chicago

ENDNOTES

(1.) Stephen Kotkin, "The Deluge Before the Dollar," New
York Times Book Review, Jan. 6, 2008.